What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

The Church and Holy Mass are not flies in amber.  I was strongly reminded of this today when saying Mass with the 1962 Missale Romanum.

In the older calendar, today is the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch.  However, on 17 October I honored St. Ignatius on his feast according to the newer Novus Ordo calendar.

Some people sort of sneer at the Novus Ordo because changes were made to prayers and feasts.  However, there were changes made after the very first "Tridentine" Missal.  Changes were constant.  Sure, most of them were adjustments rather than reconstructions.  But they were changes.  The Missal is a document reflecting a living Church.

Let’s have a little fun with this.

Here is a detail of a page in the editio princeps, the 1570 Missale Romanum.  This is the Tridentine Missal!  All the subsequent editions to 1962 we ought to call the "so-called ‘Tridentine’" Missal.

This image shows the collect for St. Ignatius as it was in 1570.



Here now is a detail of the corresponding page in the 1962 editio typica. This is the edition the Holy See says may be used licitly (not any other, mind you).



Notice that the prayer is different?

Here is the corresponding page from the 2002 editio tertia of the so-called Novus Ordo Missal.



Whew… really different.  But then again, changes have been made to prayers and feasts all along the way.  BTW… this prayer is a new composition for the Novus Ordo based on two prayers in the Sacramentarium Veronense.

I will leave it to an enterprising reader to transcribe the different versions and translate.

We are not flies in amber.  We are not stuck in a book like dried flowers waiting through the years to be glimpsed with nostalgia.

We need a derestriction of the older form of Mass for the good of the Church and the correction of her liturgical practice.  We need it soon.  But we need it for the right reason and in the right way.

The things I showed here point to a couple serious issues which might be causing some of the delay in the Motu Proprio we all long for.

There has always been the issue of the calendar. For example, I say the newer breviary, the Liturgy of the Hours, rather than the Roman Breviary as it was.  However, I very often use the pre-Conciliar Missal for Mass.  That means that there is virtually never a harmonious connection between the prayers of the office and prayers of the Mass.  (Yah… I suppose the sanctimonious out there will tell me I should use only the Roman Breviary, but  they can chew my ankles all they want.  Been there.  Done that.  It’s fine.  It’s not what I do.) 

The disconnect of calendars is a big problem.  For example, at the end of the year in the Novus Ordo we have the Solemnity of Christ the King.  In the older Mass we use up Sundays left over after Epiphany and Christ the King is at the end of October.  Holy Church can sustain many calendars, of course.  Maronites and Byzantines have their calendars and we are all Catholic.  However, if we are going to say we are Roman Catholics, using the Roman Rite, using the Roman Missal, then there is a serious problem when we are using different calendars.  If I were Pope, I would be very tempted to issue an edition of the Roman Missal with the older Ordinary of Mass but with a revised calendar so that we are all at the very least on the same page. 

Perfect solution?  Probably not.  But it is a problem needing consideration.

In any event, I thought you might enjoy this liturgico-archeological moment.